We hope you are all having a joyous Easter! We recorded a little holiday song to help you celebrate the miracle of this day (click on the link below).
We’ve spent time the past few weeks watching these beautiful videos about the life of our Savior. I thought today was the perfect day to share them with you.
A couple of weeks ago I received a copy of The Organic Family Cookbook by Anni Daulter to try out on my family. Living with it for a little while has given us ample time to peruse its pages and try out recipes.
It is certainly a beautiful book to look at. The styling and photography lend a wholesome, rustic feel, using enameled cookware, antique silverware, handwritten garden signs– showcasing the food in a way that just makes you want to take a bite. It uses a lot of fresh seasonal produce, which is hard to come by this time of year, but we made do. I think my favorite recipe is Bodhi’s Warm Berry Quinoa with Honey Butter for breakfast and it is so yummy with juicy thawed frozen berries.
The green Garden Breakfast smoothies were a big hit. The whole time we were drinking them we were quoting this Kid History video. “I know it’s gween, but what else is about it?” It’s seriously funny, so click the link and go watch it. If you’re a mom like me, trying to get healthy food into your kids, it will be painful.
The Whole Roasted Herb Chicken with Roasted Veggies and Dark Chocolate Dipping Sauce will be talked about for ages at our house. We had asparagus that night too, and I’m afraid my kids will always think we need to have chocolate sauce with asparagus from now on.
Most of my kids will not touch squash, but there weren’t any leftovers when my husband made Nuturing Butternut Squash Soup with Parmesan Crisps.
I added a few staples to my fridge, trying my hand at making mayo for the first time– Tofu Mayo to be precise. We have a little bowl of Dill Dip in there (using Greek yogurt instead of sour cream) as well as Honey Butter.
It’s not a comprehensive cookbook, but a good one for inspiration. It’s written in a friendly, conversational way with the added bonus of giving you a glimpse into the Daulter family’s life, their garden, their traditions, and what’s on their table. I always love finding things that encourage and enhance family togetherness.
Thanks for the cookbook, Anni!
Ever since I got the sewing bug while I was pregnant with Brenna and in my last days of art school I’ve thought it would be fun to design fabric. Then I became a quilter, discovered designers like Amy Butler and Anna Maria Horner (who also has 6 kids) and have thought over and over, “I could do that….. if I could just figure out how to do that.”
Well, I decided this is the year that I will learn to be a fabric designer. I got myself some books
which have helped me immensely. I learn by reading. If I can read about how to do something in a book, then I can do it, but reading directions on the computer, experimenting by trial and error– they just don’t do it for me. Kim Kight’s Field Guide to Fabric Design is fantastic. All the tutorials for digital design are for Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, but since those aren’t quite in the budget I’m having to translate things into GIMP and Inkscape, which are free. I also got a vector drawing app for my iPad call iDraw and a stylus so I can draw right on my iPad. It’s like a glorified sketchbook, though I have been using my real sketchbook a lot too.
And then there’s Spoonflower. I’ve known about it since it first started in 2008 or 2009 and signed up as soon as it wasn’t just by invitation only, but have never figured out how to make designs until now. And look!
My first test swatches came in the mail!!! My designs are printed on real fabric!!!
Anyone remember the story I told about Ian coming downstairs one morning and telling me, “Mom, we’re going to get a girl baby and her name is going to be Eva and she is going to be zero and she will have a pink shirt that is a dress”? Well, he further described that pink shirt that is a dress as having blue butterflies on it and a skirt that is blue with pink butterflies. I’ve been on the look out for pink shirts with blue butterflies, pink fabric with blue butterflies, blue fabric with pink butterflies. None. I guess I’ll have to make some.
And I can!! How fun is that?
Have you ever sewn leather? It’s always seemed a bit scary to me, but my sewing machine has a special button for sewing leather and every time I’ve sat down at it I’ve wondered, “Could I really sew leather? What would I make?” It was an itch I needed to scratch, so the other weekend I ventured to Denver Fabrics. It’s a crazy HUGE place that is completely overwhelming for me, but I knew I could find pretty leather. That I did. I bought a supple brown lamb skin and brought it home. I made 2 projects with it, but today I’ll just show you one. (The auto focus on my main camera lens is dying and I only got okay photos of one of the things I made.)
Behold the little shoes:
Aren’t they perfect? I love them. They are such a cute shape, with a wide toe. Robeez are cute, but sometimes the decoration on them is a bit much for me. I used this pattern with a few modifications. Since I was using leather instead of fabric I didn’t make the heel or sole two layers. I did line the toe part with some fabric, though, so I had a little channel for the elastic to go through.
I used the suede side of the leather for the sole and a decorative flower stitch to topstitch them. The actual sewing was just like sewing regular fabric. I made sure I had a leather needle in my machine and that was it. Piece of cake.
And because I can’t resist it, here are some pictures of the other end of my little shoe model.
The camera clicking woke her up.
How will I survive when she’s not a baby anymore? I need to freeze time.